Agile methods for agile universities

We explore a term, Agile, that is being used in various workplace settings, including the management of universities. The term may have several related but slightly different meanings. Agile is often used in the context of facilitating more creative problem-solving and advocating for the adoption, design, tailoring and continual updating of more innovative organizational processes. We consider a particular set of meanings of the term from the world of software development. Agile methods were created to address certain problems with the software development process. Many of those problems have interesting analogues in the context of universities, so a reflection on agile methods may be a useful heuristic for generating ideas for enabling universities to be more creative

Automated operant assessments of Huntington's Disease mouse models

Huntington’s disease (HD) presents clinically with a triad of motor, cognitive, and psychiatric symptoms. Cognitive symptoms often occur early within the disease progression, prior to the onset of motor symptoms, and they are significantly burdensome to people who are affected by HD. In order to determine the suitability of mouse models of HD in recapitulating the human condition, these models must be behaviorally tested and characterized. Operant behavioral testing offers an automated and objective method of behaviorally profiling motor, cognitive, and psychiatric dysfunction in HD mice. Furthermore, operant testing can also be employed to determine any behavioral changes observed after any associated interventions or experimental therapeutics. We here present an overview of the most commonly used operant behavioral tests to dissociate motor, cognitive, and psychiatric aspects of mouse models of HD

What drives female objectification? An investigation of appearance-based interpersonal perceptions and the objectification of women

Previous research finds that both men and women perceive sexualized women as lacking in certain human qualities such as mental capacity and moral status. The mechanism underlying this effect, however, is unclear. The present two studies test how appearance-based judgements affect the degree to which a broad sample of women are objectified. In Study 1 (N = 279), full-body images of women wearing different clothing outfits were rated by male and female participants on perceived attractiveness, sexual intent and age. In Study 2, male and female participants (N = 1,695) viewed these same images from Study 1 and rated them on two dimensions of objectification (agency and patiency). We analyzed associations between these dimensions of objectification and the averaged appearance-based perceptions from Study 1. We find that women perceived as more open to casual sex are attributed less mental capacity and less moral status. We also find that participants tend to associate attractiveness with greater mental and moral status in women, but we find only limited evidence that perceived age influences objectification. Our findings suggest that although positive attractiveness biases may mitigate the amount a woman is objectified, greater female objectification may be prompted by observers' negative stereotypes of promiscuous women

Microbial differences between dental plaque and historic dental calculus are related to oral biofilm maturation stage

Dental calculus, calcified oral plaque biofilm, contains microbial and host biomolecules that can be used to study historic microbiome communities and host responses. Dental calculus does not typically accumulate as much today as historically, and clinical oral microbiome research studies focus primarily on living dental plaque biofilm. However, plaque and calculus reflect different conditions of the oral biofilm, and the differences in microbial characteristics between the sample types have not yet been systematically explored. Here, we compare the microbial profiles of modern dental plaque, modern dental calculus, and historic dental calculus to establish expected differences between these substrates.- Background - Results -- Authentication of a preserved oral biofilm in calculus samples -- Dental calculus and plaque biofilm communities are distinct -- Health-associated communities of dental plaque and calculus are distinct -- Signatures of health and of disease are shared in modern and historic calculus samples -- Microbial community differences between health and disease in calculus are poorly resolved -- Absence of caries-specific microbial profiles in dental calculus -- Microbial co-exclusion patterns in plaque and calculus reflect biofilm maturity -- Microbial complexes in plaque and calculus -- Functional prediction in calculus is poorly predictive of health status -- Proteomic profiles of historic healthy site calculus -- Correlations between taxonomic, proteomic, and metabolomic profiles - Discussion - Conclusions - Materials and methods --Historic and modern calculus sample collection DNA extraction -- DNA library construction and high-throughput sequencing -- DNA sequence processing -- Genetic assessment of historic calculus sample preservation -- Genetic microbial taxonomic profiling -- Principal component analysis -- Assessment of differentially abundant taxa -- Sparse partial least squares-discriminant analysis -- Assessment of microbial co-exclusion patterns -- Gene functional categorization with SEED -- Proteomics -- Metabolomics -- Regularized canonical correlation analysi

Changes in intracellular ion activities induced by adrenaline in human and rat skeletal muscle

To study the stimulating effect of adrenaline (ADR) on active Na+/K+ transport we used double-barrelled ion-sensitive micro-electrodes to measure the activities of extracellular K+ (aKe) and intracellular Na+ (aNai) in isolated preparations of rat soleus muscle, normal human intercostal muscle and one case of hyperkalemic periodic paralysis (h.p.p.). In these preparations bath-application of ADR (10−6 M) resulted in a membrane hyperpolarization and transient decreasesaKe andaNai which could be blocked by ouabain (3×10−4 M). In the h.p.p. muslce a continuous rise ofaNai induced by elevation ofaKe to 5.2 mM could be stopped by ADR. In addition, the intracellular K+ activity (aKi), the free intracellular Ca2+ concentration (pCai) and intracellular pH (pHi) were monitored in rat soleus muscle. During ADRaKi increased, pHi remained constant and intracellular Ca2+ apparently decreased. In conclusion, our data show that ADR primarily stimulates the Na+/K+ pump in mammalian skeletal muscle. This stimulating action is not impaired in the h.p.p. muscle

On-shell Recursion in String Theory

We prove that all open string theory disc amplitudes in a flat background obey Britto-Cachazo-Feng-Witten (BCFW) on-shell recursion relations, up to a possible reality condition on a kinematic invariant. Arguments that the same holds for tree level closed string amplitudes are given as well. Non-adjacent BCFW-shifts are related to adjacent shifts through monodromy relations for which we provide a novel CFT based derivation. All possible recursion relations are related by old-fashioned string duality. The field theory limit of the analysis for amplitudes involving gluons is explicitly shown to be smooth for both the bosonic string as well as the superstring. In addition to a proof a less rigorous but more powerful argument based on the underlying CFT is presented which suggests that the technique may extend to a much more general setting in string theory. This is illustrated by a discussion of the open string in a constant B-field background and the closed string on the level of the sphere.Comment: 36 + 9 pages text, one figure, v3: added discussion on relation to old-fashioned factorization, typos corrected, published versio

A review of RCTs in four medical journals to assess the use of imputation to overcome missing data in quality of life outcomes

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The interplay between economic status and attractiveness, and the importance of attire in mate choice judgments

Desirable characteristics of "opposite sex others," such as physical attractiveness and economic status, can influence how individuals are judged, and this is different for men and women. However, under various social contexts where cues of higher or lower economic status is suggested, sex differences in judgments related to mate choice have not been fully explored. In two studies, ratings of economic status and attractiveness were quantified for male and female targets that were presented under various social contexts. Study 1 assessed judgments (n = 1,359) of images of nine male and nine female targets in different sized groups containing only opposite-sex others (i.e., group size). While we found no significant effects of group size on male and female attractiveness, target female economic status increased when surrounded by two or more men. An ad hoc analysis controlling for the attire of the targets (business or casual) found that the association between target female economic status and group size occurred when females were in business attire. Study 2 investigates this effect further by presenting images of 12 males and 12 females, in higher and lower status attire (i.e., business and casual clothing) and measured judgments of attractiveness and economic status among women and men (n = 1,038). Consistent with the results of Study 1, female economic status was only affected when women were in business attire. However, female economic status decreased when in the presence of other men in business attire. There were no sex differences in judgments of economic status when judging stimuli in casual attire. Additionally, negative associations between attractiveness and economic status were found for males presented in casual attire. We discuss these results in the light of evolutionary sexual conflict theory by demonstrating how the asymmetrical importance of status between men and women can influence mate choice judgments

Intermittent control models of human standing: similarities and differences

Two architectures of intermittent control are compared and contrasted in the context of the single inverted pendulum model often used for describing standing in humans. The architectures are similar insofar as they use periods of open-loop control punctuated by switching events when crossing a switching surface to keep the system state trajectories close to trajectories leading to equilibrium. The architectures differ in two significant ways. Firstly, in one case, the open-loop control trajectory is generated by a system-matched hold, and in the other case, the open-loop control signal is zero. Secondly, prediction is used in one case but not the other. The former difference is examined in this paper. The zero control alternative leads to periodic oscillations associated with limit cycles; whereas the system-matched control alternative gives trajectories (including homoclinic orbits) which contain the equilibrium point and do not have oscillatory behaviour. Despite this difference in behaviour, it is further shown that behaviour can appear similar when either the system is perturbed by additive noise or the system-matched trajectory generation is perturbed. The purpose of the research is to come to a common approach for understanding the theoretical properties of the two alternatives with the twin aims of choosing which provides the best explanation of current experimental data (which may not, by itself, distinguish beween the two alternatives) and suggesting future experiments to distinguish between the two alternatives

Sex differences in sexual attraction for aesthetics, resources and personality across age

Because sexual attraction is a key driver of human mate choice and reproduction, we descriptively assess relative sex differences in the level of attraction individuals expect in the aesthetic, resource, and personality characteristics of potential mates. As a novelty we explore how male and female sexual attractiveness preference changes across age, using a dataset comprising online survey data for over 7,000 respondents across a broad age distribution of individuals between 18 and 65 years. In general, we find that both males and females show similar distribution patterns in their preference responses, with statistically significant sex differences within most of the traits. On average, females rate age, education, intelligence, income, trust, and emotional connection around 9 to 14 points higher than males on our 0-100 scale range. Our relative importance analysis shows greater male priority for attractiveness and physical build, compared to females, relative to all other traits. Using multiple regression analysis, we find a consistent statistical sex difference (males relative to females) that decreases linearly with age for aesthetics, while the opposite is true for resources and personality, with females exhibiting a stronger relative preference, particularly in the younger aged cohort. Exploring non-linearity in sex difference with contour plots for intelligence and attractiveness across age (mediated by age) indicates that sex differences in attractiveness preferences are driven by the male cohort (particularly age 30 to 40) for those who care about the importance of age, while intelligence is driven by females caring relatively more about intelligence for those who see age as very important (age cohort 40 to 55). Overall, many of our results indicate distinct variations within sex at key life stages, which is consistent with theories of selection pressure. Moreover, results also align with theories of parental investment, the gender similarities hypothesis, and mutual mate choice- which speaks to the fact that the broader discipline of evolutionary mate choice research in humans still contains considerable scope for further inquiry towards a unified theory, particularly when exploring sex-difference across age